Friday, December 25, 2009

Monday, December 21, 2009

Ahahaha, I’m sure people are looking at this the wrong way round – I mean, this way I get to sit around, asking people questions and reading blogs :) Whenever I read your blog I’m always impressed by how well you seem to handle some of the more, err, challenging situations WoW can throw up sometimes. So, what’s the most difficult thing you’ve ever had to deal with in WoW, how did you handle it, and looking back on it would you have acted differently?

This is the reply that I got from Tamarind when I enthusiastically signed up for his syphilis meme. I have to admit, it's one that got me thinking. Since Tam didn't specify in which are it had to be difficult I pondered into different directions for a little, and then decided that I might as well describe it per subject.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

What a brilliant patch 3.3 is turning out to be. Maybe the biggest thing is the LFD thing they stuck in, but I have to say that so far I've liked a fair few other changes a lot as well.

Just this morning I sent my horde shammie account bound items so that she can dungeon her way up to 80, and she's also gotten the heirloom flying book. My warlock has pretty Hodir shoulder enchant. And my priest is slowly gathering Frost Emblems, I think she'll get the cloak first.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

And we even got to play yesterday! In fact, Thror, a friend, and myself went to do the new dungeon. We used the dungeon tool, stuck in a search for the new dungeon, and found a healer and a rogue to join us. Both seemed pretty okishly geared, and both turned out to be easy-going people.

I had been looking forward to these dungeons. So much in fact that I turned off 'House' the moment that I noticed that I could actually log on (took only 10 minutes or so).

Friday, November 27, 2009

When I was walking around in the city center here yesterday most of the shopping windows had started to fill up with Christmas stuff already. Trees with lights, candles everywhere, and even the street decoration was being put up.Some of my raiders started talking about putting the trees up in their homes already.

I love Christmas, a lot, but I have to say that this is a bit early for my taste. But then I got thinking. Maybe if I stick my wishlist up early enough this year, Blizz Santa will listen to me and give me some of my WoW wishes! (hey, one can dream, right?)

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Been poking the new LFG tool a bit on the PTR and the one thing I noticed so far is that if you enter with 2 different roles, of which one is dps...too bad, it will never (and I mean every time I have done so) enter you as dps, but as your other role.

Healer and dps? Guaranteed you'll be healing. Tank and dps? Yupyup, you must be tanking. I haven't checked what they do when you mention tank and healer in there, but I wonder.

Monday, November 23, 2009

Seriously Blizz....Turkey Hunter. 250 odd turkeys dead, 39 stacks at least twice, and not enough turkeys around for the people who need to kill them. If you guys had actually wanted to make this not as frustrating as it is now....there are 4 starting zones.

You want people to become frustrated with your game? Do this sort of stuff.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

In this small series of descriptions on fights in Trial of the Grand Crusader I will assume that you know how to do the fight on normal so I will go through them really rather quickly. I'll deal with all 5 fights separately, this is the third one.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

More information is leaking through about the new system for guilds in Cataclysm. Information mostly being picked up here and there from what Blizzard is willing to let slip, and I have to say that I'm a bit divided on it so far.

So far it seems that as a guild you will be able to gain xp and with that xp you will sort of level up, and gain talent points. That xp will come from the top 20 earners in the guild each week, and it will not carry over into next week.

I honestly believe that what Blizzard is doing is part of a bigger thing. And no, not a bigger thing involving Blizzard alone. This is simply a direct consequence of how people want their business being served.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

There will be 3 options in the loot screen with 3.3, need, greed, and disenchant. Disenchant will go on the same roll as greed. But need will still go above the other two.

On the one hand it's very positive that Blizzard has taken notice of the problems that enchanters are having, but the solution they've chosen goes completely against my feeling of honesty.

Before at least I could chose myself if I wanted to offer the option of DEing, now I have no choice, since the game will scan for a character in the group that can DE items and just offer a disenchant roll. So now everybody can use my profession as they see fit without me having anything to say about it.

This being said, I'm wondering when we'll see loot screens for mining where I can roll need/greed. Skinning, and herbalism same thing. It would only be fair since people can now use my profession without my consent for their own little benefits, so why shouldn't I be allowed to use their profession for my benefit?

Why would I want to level enchanting at all how it's going to be in 3.3? I'll just DE greed my mats. No need for enchanters anymore. No need to look them up in trade to DE my greens, so they can make a buck.

No need to look enchanters up anymore anyways since they can just stick their enchants on scrolls, which you can then go buy on AH.

And if you think about it. Why do non enchanters even get the option to roll DE? They cannot DE, they cannot do anything with the shards/dust/essences, but sell them. Not to speak about the prices going down of these items since this system will ensure a lot more enchanting materials to be available on the market.

I currently know of a lot of people who simply sell their greens to the vendor and don't go through the efforts of finding an enchanter to DE stuff for them. That will be finished for anything DEable that drops in dungeons.

I have loved being an enchanter for a long time, but am now seriously considering switching professions. I haven't seen benefits to it for a long time (where are my Enchanting patterns in ToC? I see millions for tailoring, LWing, BSing, but nothing for the other professions, and the Ulduar drop is so rare that I've seen it only two times so far), and now they've decided that my profession is supposed to give the entire group benefits.

So I have two options, switch profession, or do not do pugs (since with guildies this has never been a problem, and I doubt will ever be a problem). And not doing pugs will lock me out of several of the new systems in 3.3. (which is another story entirely, and will no doubt turn into a separate post at some point).

I am not a happy camper.But at least we know Blizzard's verdict on it. They feel everybody is entitled to have disenchanted items, so instead of giving the choice to the gamer, they just make it easy and take that choice away.

(BTW, if anybody is able to give me the positive side of this, let me know, since I cannot find any save for the part that Blizzard has at least noticed that there was a problem, and that I won't have to press my DE button as often anymore)

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

So more and more information streaming in about the upcoming patch 3.3. and while I've been keeping an eye on it, I've been trying to not go onto the PTR too much this time around, and decided to keep more of it a secret.

However, I do keep a half eye on MMO Champion, and if you ever read anything about the game it's hard to completely avoid information.

Don't read if you don't want the spoilers. The post is not too spoiler heavy, but if you don't want to know anything about it, then stop here.

Friday, October 30, 2009

In this small series of descriptions on fights in Trial of the Grand Crusader I will assume that you know how to do the fight on normal so I will go through them really rather quickly. I'll deal with all 5 fights separately, this is the fourth one.

Thursday, October 29, 2009

In this small series of descriptions on fights in Trial of the Grand Crusader I will assume that you know how to do the fight on normal so I will go through them really rather quickly. I'll deal with all 5 fights separately, this is the third one.

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

In this small series of descriptions on fights in Trial of the Grand Crusader I will assume that you know how to do the fight on normal so I will go through them really rather quickly. I'll deal with all 5 fights separately, this is the second one, the first one, on Northrend Beasts, can be found here.

Group Comp

2 tanks

2 or 3 healers

5 or 6 dps

Jaraxxus

Portals have to be killed otherwise they won't stop spewing mistresses

Vulcanoes have to be killed as well so they don't keep spewing infernals

It is very important to kill the portal before you get a second mistress when you're starting out doing this. We handled a second mistress last weekend, but it really makes it a lot harder

Dispell Jaraxxus, if you do not dispell the spellpower buff the next fireball he gets off is likely an insta kill

The mistress' kiss is annoying on normal, lethal on heroic. If you get it make sure to have a spell with cast time at hand of a spell school you don't mind getting locked

Incinerate Flesh will need more healing before it disappears (40k instead of 30k), and it is THE most important debuff to get off during this fight. Failing to heal off the incinerate flesh will most likely result in a wipe

Monday, October 26, 2009

In this small series of descriptions on fights in Trial of the Grand Crusader I will assume that you know how to do the fight on normal so I will go through them really rather quickly. I'll deal with all 5 fights separately, this is the first one.

Group Comp

2 tanks

2 or 3 healers

5 or 6 dps

Phase 1: Gormok the Impaler

Tanks should switch on 2 impales as with normal

Fires thrown out leave a dot that ticks for quite a bit of damage, move out of them as soon as it's thrown

With the fire dots it's handy to know that Gormok will always prefer to throw them on ranged, so as long as you have enough people at range he is 99% sure to throw out the fires on a ranged person

Ranged with snobolds should move to the melee to get their snobold taken off with extra speed so the melee doesn't have to move, less melee movement = more dps

Phase 2: Acidmaw & Dreadscale

As normal, 1 tank on Acidmaw, 1 on Dreadscale

Tank with burning bile frees people with paralytic poison

Do not stand in front of either of the worms unless you're the tank

Do not pull agro of the worms so that they can spray all over you and the rest of the raid

Make sure the raid spreads out so as few people as possible get burning bile at any one time

Phase 3: Icehowl

Tank him facing the wall

When he does a charge you do NOT get the runspeed increase, but you DO have to make sure to get away from him

If you fail and he hits you, you're screwed, not only because he enrages and you likely have a dead tank and a dead dps/healer that he hit on his way, but also because you miss out on the extra dps that you get while he is normally stunned

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Started out the evening with clearing normal ToC 10 in 28 minutes, then moved on to the heroic version. Ran into some trouble at Twins (stupid globes) but got them down, and moved on to actually killing Anub!

We had 43 tries or so left as well, so we got the extra weapon in the chest. Next week on to having 45 or more attempts left :)

Moved on to Sarth3d to pick up another black drake. I think we're close to everybody in the group having one. And finally we did Ony, got the more whelps achievement there. Very very satisfying raid night.

I'll do a write up on some of the ToCheroic versions soonish, especially since we went looking for some tips and tricks for Anub and could find none of them. Sure we could find what was different, but nothing really helpful about the tactics in there.

This week I'll also try to post the final post in the Secret of Disc Healing series so busy writing week ahead. Stay tuned!

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

In this part I will speak about spells used, order of importance, hitpoints, and some about UI.

Spells

All healer classes have a multitude of spells nowadays to be able to react to different situations. As a discipline priest you can pretty much count on the following things to be true:

Does your target have Weakened Soul? No? You're doing it wrong.

Penance on cooldown? No? You're doing it wrong.

PoM on cooldown? No? You're doing it wrong.

Only when those 3 are down can you go to flash heal, greater heal, prayer of healing, or other spells that the situation requires. There are very, very few situations where you don't cast in that order of importancy.

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Been playing my troll shammie a little, and not feeling too woah about WoW. Not sure what it is, it might have to do with the fact that I had a trapped nerf in my shoulder last week that forced me to stay away from the computer a lot. It might also have to do with the fact that I actually went away and did RL stuff this weekend *gasp I know*.

Either way, I poked through some of my old writing. Nono, not old writing here. Older.
I used to write on a writing forum. I come there still...sometimes, but I write different stuff now, and when I do write I write for myself instead of posting it.

I even wrote a book once...well, yeah, I wrote it, but of course it never got published. Anyway, this old poem reflected really well what I was feeling in my head today while I was trying to decide whether I should follow the hallow's end craze or actually do stuff that I wanted to do.

I decided that it was stupid to do stuff that I didn't feel like doing, just because it was there...duh.

Friday, October 9, 2009

First off, apologies to Tamarind. I didn't mean to suggest that you didn't say anything, but I wasn't aware that you had in fact been, well.. sort of screaming about it.

Really, honestly, I would've left the asshats there and then. Would've saved me the trouble, and them. They obviously had no patience with a newer player whatsoever. Responsibility towards guildies? Where was theirs? Nope, sorry, no responsibility on my side at that point.

Moving on.

This post contains language you might not want to read, and it might be a bit all over the place because I got a bit agitated while writing it.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Normally I try to not go into specific classes or roles on this blog, especially since I seem to do things just that little bit different than most of the 'specialist' sites tell you to do stuff. However, I was asked to write a post about disc priesting.

The problem is that I DO priesting, I'm not used to talking about it. So I could try to explain how I make things work for me. What works for me might not work for you. I could tell you all about specs, talents, spell rotation, etc

The simple truth is that while I have it all figured out for me, I find it impossible to explain it to someone else in detail. Healing is not about rotation, spec, or talents. Sure, those things count, but they're not the basic idea of healing.

Monday, October 5, 2009

Earlier today I posted about weekly raid quests. My first reaction can be read here.

Thinking about it a bit more I still don't like the idea. My problem is not so much that they become a quest my problem stems from a different thought though. On the PTR the quest reward is Emblem of Frost.

I had a week off from work last week, so I'm a bit behind on the news, but I just read about weekly raid instance quests on MMO Champion.

My first reaction:

Seriously, do we really need more pressure to repeat stuff, Blizzard? Do we really need more of the feeling "OMG I cannot take a week off since I would run behind everybody else!" ? Why do we have extended lockouts? We can't really not kill bosses, since we have to complete the quests! Right?!

My 10man is currently taking the time to get Firefighter on farm, work on Algalon, and Yogg+1. Can't do that anymore I guess or we'll not get the required items for our progression content. We can kill them easily on normal, so does this mean we should just not extend and get the items that will probably be required for progression content? Bah, Don't like this sort of pressure.

Sunday, October 4, 2009

For Cataclysm we're promised a whole new way of leveling. I've leveled 4 characters to 80, and I have another two in between 70 and 80. Not too many compared to some, but a lot compared to others.

The first ever character you level you have no idea what you're doing. And depending on how fast you pick it up, or not, you'll have a good time levelling or you absolutely hate it. For me it was rather neutral. This was the first MMO I played like this, and I didn't level on my own, I levelled together with Thror. He played a pallie, I played a lock, he healed, and I pewpewed. It went fine together, not too slow, not too fast..it seemed.

We were also lucky enough to already have a friend on the server, who had an epiced out warrior. He ran us through Stocks a couple of times, and boy was it fun to see him whirl around and have everything drop dead at your feet. I was even lucky enough to have a blue drop in there, which sold nicely so I wasn't even out of money.

Saturday, October 3, 2009

When working on the loremaster achievement you do get to the coolest spots...literally. I got some great screenshots along the way, and I figured I would do a where am I. The picture however is not one of my screenshots, Celedhring contributed it, and I'm still looking for this spot myself.

And just for funs...a who am I? Shouldn't be too hard to guess..only few NPCs this ugly in the game.

Friday, October 2, 2009

I got to thinking about enchanting more, and the whole comment Mandii made on the post from yesterday, and how people think they have a right to the enchanting mats because it's not a bonus, it's an instead of loot thing.

Unfortunately the only way I can think of to solve this problem is make it so that no gear can be disenchanted anymore, and mats only drop from mobs (there goes the lore reason for disenchanting). I guess until something better is being done I'll just be happy to be in a guild that understands how much of a pain it can be to level this trade skill, and petty the people who have to level this skill all by themselves and through pugs.

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Last weekend we finally did it! We beat Firefighter on 10man! We were on our 11th try, and every try seeemed to go just that tiny bit better. We even brought someone who had never even seen this fight before, and though it was about >< this close, we did make it! Wooooot!

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Lately all these random ideas have been floating around in my head, so I figured I would write them down. That way I'll get them out, and they might stop bugging me. I'll start with a couple of skills today, and prolly finish the list at some later time.

Enchanting
Boss loot drops are the enchanters' mining nodes. They're the flowers for herbalists and the skins for skinners, and yet somehow people often seem to feel that they have a right to the enchanting materials that come out of disenchanting a loot drop, but nobody ever roles for ore, flowers, or leather.

When I levelled my enchanting in Wrath many guildies sent me materials to level my skill. Still today people send me mats, and in change I enchant their gear. But if you're not that lucky with your guild, and you rely mainly on pugging to get your enchanting supplies, it's hard to get enough to level.

On top of that you're not making any money on boe greens since they're all becoming mats for skillpoints, whereas people without enchanting skill either sell them in AH or get them DEed for their own profit.

Monday, September 21, 2009

It’s while ago already that Thror and myself applied to a guild with our EU characters. This guild was looking for a tank and since Thror tanks, we figured we would apply. At that point we weren’t even level 80 yet, so we didn’t really expect anything of it, but figured we would offer anyways.

Naturally the guild said no, they needed a tank now, and we just weren't ready. Also Thror and myself are a package deal, and they just didn’t have space for a pallie tank and disc priest. Fair enough. I replied back that I completely understood, and that if they did get space for pallie/priest combo that they could look us up in the future. I never expected to hear back from them.

But surprise, surprise, last week I got an email, saying that they would now have space for a pallie/priest combo, but that Thror would have to go ret. The recruiting officer had armoried him and had seen that he was ret, if this was a problem.

Well, no, not to Thror and me, this definitely wasn’t a problem. However, what was a problem was that this guild was expecting recruits to already be geared before they would even get into the guild. I sent a message back explaining that we weren’t in a raiding guild, and that all the gear we had came from some pug runs.

They had no space for us. Oh well, understandable, they had no time to gear up people, we simply didn’t have the gear they needed on characters.

It continued with me suggesting that it would be cool however to already join the guild so that we could get to know people a little, maybe run some heroics. Not actively raiding would be fine with us.And then in the future we might actually be able to help out. After all we both do have the skill for these fights, well the fights they were on and more I must say even.

Friday, September 18, 2009

So I think most people agreed that the floating side bar wasn't so succesful. (shoulda heard my colleague "I have no taste, butuhm" ) I've been working hard on a new one (yes, I got rid of your scary floating face), but it isn't done yet.

Silly comments need customization apparently.

Oh well, at least I have my bullet points back...

Oh special thanks to The First Angel, she gave me permission to use her image for the header. Go check out the rest of her art, it's pretty amazing.

Been working on a new blog layout yesterday. Needs a few tweaks still, but it's getting there. Same feel different colors. I enjoy fiddling with that sort of stuff every now and then, but it is quite a bit of work. Been blogging since April now though, I know that I'm not going away anymore, so it'll be worth the time to get it right ^_^.

But with that in mind it could happen that my blog is down somewhere this weekend. I'm scared shitless that I lose a post, or worse, one of the reader comments. So I've been working on getting everything backed up.

I also should get an about page setup (the new layout will have a real menu with home links and everything! \o/) Anybody any idea how I make about pages? The only thing I've come up with so far is created a post, and link through to that. (Hmm...now I say this I might have a different way as well, we'll see)

Anyway, I figured I would give out some blog love, since I haven't gotten round to posting something too constructive myself:

Righteous Orbs has discovered a conspiracy (well, it's a good read anyway)

Mikato from Resto-Melee is working on an RP blog, looking forward to reading some

The explanation why quite a few gamers stay single (tip! good way to start your day)

And finally a non-wow related blog I've been following for a while now. She writes about travelling, and this month she's been writing on a 30ways in 30days thing. At first I got interested in this blog by her starting posts. She quit her job and she and her husband went travelling and working while doing so. She gives out all handy sorts of tips, so if you one day plan to do such a thing, go check it out.

This comes from Twitter. I'm not sure why comments aren't allowed, but I will definitely look into this. Of course I allow comments. (Just not without me checking them before I allow them publicly, I did learn my lesson with that early on.) I'll check into my commenting system when I get home from work.

But yeah, apologies if I misunderstood. The posts made me feel ergh inside. They made me feel as if people were just throwing mud at each other, which in turn just made me go, yugh don't want to read this sort of stuff. I guess my sense of humor is not the same, and I guess as long as both parties are happy with it, all's right in the world.

Shame that this sort of stuff so badly translates in text. There's enough people in the world who call others idiots and throw mud. But these people apparently throw friendly mud, or something....

So while I'll definitely keep skipping those type of posts, I'll look them up for their theorycrafting and other posts.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

even though I know it might not be the smartest move. World of Snarkcraft, a blog that I normally enjoy reading has decided to pick on another blog I like reading.

Apparently it's a scandal to have a blog called 'I like bubbles' when you have been a holy priest at some point. And while I smartly ignored the first post, after the second all I could think was 'are you really that childish? wow.'

I thought this sort of stuff would be below you Seri and Jov. Unfortunately Ambrosyne didn't entirely rise above it either.

Sad to say I now have two less blogs that I read :(

Rivs, I'll take your snarkiness above this sort of nonsense any day....

Monday, September 14, 2009

So I run a lot of pug groups. Thror and myself play mostly on a USA server, and we live on EU time. Meaning: when we are on, not an awful lot of our USA guildies are. And while it has gotten better with the forming of Pugtastic, we do still pick up people from LFG quite often.

We did another half-pug in heroic ToC yesterday. It was the daily, and we figured we would pick up our champion's seals and emblems at the same time. So we asked in our Pugtastic channel and one of our loyal druids happily came along. Left us with 2 spots to fill still.

Being that we're just slightly over-geared (and maybe overconfident?) for the instance we normally figure that it doesn't really matter who we pick up for these runs, anybody will do really.

And to be honest, most of the time we're pretty lucky with whom we pick up. I also fully believe that there are more cool people out there then there are idiots. And to be fair, both of the pugs we picked up were pretty ok, except that one of them made a pretty big mistake in my books...

He went afk for just a moment. And I bet we all know these 'moments'.

5 things you should not do when pugging

Don't join groups when you know you will have to leave halfway through the instance

There is nothing more annoying than the pug who announces halfway through an instance that they have to leave. Here you stand with a half-cleared heroic, almost impossible to find a replacement (cause they want all the badges most of the time) and you're stuck with an incompleted daily heroic. Say byebye to your emblems of triumph for that day.

If you cannot go for the full run at that time, then don't go at all.

Don't go afk for just a moment, and then come back 10 minutes later

This is my pet peeve. If you go afk, and have 4 people waiting for you for 5 minutes, you have just wasted 20 minutes of people's free time. Imagine your boss telling you to wait around every day for 20 minutes in your free time. Just waiting, not even doing something useful, nope, just waiting.

Doesn't feel good, huh?

Enlarge this scale. You got invited to a 25man pug raid, and you make them wait for 5 minutes. That's 24 x 5 = 2 hours of free time wasted, just because you had to go afk.

I mean, fair enough if you have to go potty, but dude, communicate it properly. 'brb bio' is easily typed, and should not take you 5 minutes. (exceptions there of course).

Don't need on stuff you cannot possible use, unless the achievement 'Needy' has come up or something

If you're not sure about the loot system used, just pass. Nobody likes ninja's and you will be regarded a ninja if you just need on loot you cannot use without discussing it before hand.

Well....either it shows you're a ninja, or what might be even worse, they think you're an idiot for needing something your class cannot even use properly. (No, spellpower is not for ret pallies).

Don't pretend you know fights you've never done before

If the raidleader asks if there are people who have never done a fight before, 'fess up!

I mean really, there is nothing wrong with not knowing how the charges work on Thaddius, what is wrong is if people all say they know and turn out to have no idea so the entire raid wipes due to a wrongly charged person.

We have all started somewhere, and if you have a good raidleader they will give you chances to prove that you can understand explanation. But you do have to give the raidleader a chance to explain.

Don't opt for fights you're not ready for

There still is a certain progression through the game. If you're a new player, don't try to step into a raid without understanding group mechanism. Go do a dungeon first.

And without ever having done Naxx, don't try to get into Ulduar groups. Go do that Naxx first, at least once to get a feel for raiding. Even if you have had guild groups carrying you through content up to 80, and you feel you have gear, go do that boring Naxx.

Learning how to handle mobs cannot be boosted.

And if the raidleader then tells you that you might not be up for this or that fight, based on you not having experience, accept it. Most raidleaders I know do know what experience, gear level, etc is required for a certain fight. Don't go for ToC if you've never seen a dungeon, even if you're an alt. Go play your character in the simpler group setting first before taking him/her out to get the big baddies down.

5 things you do do when pugging

Be polite

Nobody likes people who are just rude. If you have nothing normal to say, then just say nothing.

Ask if you have a question

I know most people prefer pretending they know everything already, because god forbid you look....unexperienced.

Really though, if you went for the right content for your experience progression there is nothing wrong with asking questions. Make sure you're clear on what is expected from you. We all had to learn how to play this game, and there is a lot to learn as a newer player.

Make sure to know the loot rules

When I first started playing on my EU server I too had to ask about what the going loot rules were. Having played for quite a while now I knew enough with only half a word, but if you're used to passing and then rolling, everybody using the need/greed system will definitely rubb you the wrong way if you don't know that this is the custom on that server.

Offer knowledge, but only if asked for

Sure, you know all the fights, you will teach this pug how to do it! Right?

Wrong. If your goal is to just have a good time you can offer some friendly hints and suggestions, but nobody likes know it alls. So if you step into a group and start telling them that their all noobs and that they should do it your way, don't expect to get invited back.

Instead you could whisper the leader and ask if it would be ok if you explain the strategy you're used to using.

Be prepared

If you're sticking yourself into LFG and you get an invite you should be ready to go there and then. Not tell the raidleader/groupleader that they should hold on just 2 minutes until you've finished so and so quest. No, shouldn't have stuck yourself in LFG if you wanted to quest, or except that you will finish the quest after the instance.

Also, if this is a raid you're going for, make sure to have flasks, potions, vent, etc. Making people wait is bad, not having flasks if needed is worse.

I'm sure I've missed points on these lists, but in general treat people in game as you would want to be treated IRL and you're normally fine. That PUG group you joined are real people on the other side of their screens, with real feelings, and real annoyances.

It's Monday again. Had a 3 day weekend, and spent it doing....well, not much useful stuff. I was nice and lazy and played a lot of WoW ^_^

- 10s: We killed the entire instance easily, then switched to hard mode. In hard mode we took down the first 3 bosses, and got stuck on Twins. Not so much because we can't do that one, but more because we were running out of time. But wow do those orbs do a lot of damage >_<

We also did Freya - Knock x3 which went amazingly well. In fact, it went so well that we not only got Knock x3, but we also got Conspeedatory at the same time for some people who didn't have it yet. Guess we did the whole place, including Freya in under 20 minutes, not bad.

- 25s: We cleared ToC25. It was such a satisfactory moment that Anub went down, especially since we had seen him at like 2% 3 times already. I think everybody cheered on vent.

I have to admit, this guy is a lot harder on 25 then on 10. Funny how some fights remain easier on 10 and others are just a lot harder when you have less people.

- Loremaster: 501/700 in Kalimdor. I'll get there one day, but boy do they have you flying all over the place >_<

- Wintersaber: 1525 rep away from revered. Doing a little bit each day prevents me from going insane. And I will get a wintersaber cat.

- Quel'Dorei Pony: I got my pony! It's pretty and white, and woah now I have to get even more tokens to finally get that tabard. But I got my pony!

- Warlock Alt: I also finally got into the flow of killing stuff on my warlock. Guess the thought of race changes coming in so that my gnomie can finally grow up to become a humie has something to do with that...Or maybe those two heirloom items and the epic flying I got her helps? It certainly makes it go a lot faster. She is now 73.

Also, why on earth does Demonology exist? o_O I can't even imagine that being a good tree for PVP. I mean taunt in your demon form? Why? Seriously, why?

Levelling in Affliction, which really makes me wonder why all the raiding locks are destruction. I guess they feel they do more dps? I wonder though, I'd already decided to become an affliction lock since I created a pre-made one on the PTR and scored close to 4K dps without glyphs or proper enchants.

- Troll Shammie: My Dranei shammie is now a troll shammie, she has gorgeous pink braids. I should somehow find the time to go see those horde quests in Northrend. After all this is the entire reason I changed her to horde side.

First impression is that the horde starting hold in Borean is redonkulously confuzzling (see Eternal, I used the word!). You arrive on the Zeppelin somewhere at the top, get told to speak to someone at the south side, but I am completely confused on how to get there. Did run into other quests on the way so started doing them a little. They get to ride Kodos straight in their Northrend starting area, my Alliance characters were all jealous.

So yeah, haven't been blogging much, but wow, have I enjoyed myself in game ^_^

Monday, September 7, 2009

Kay the title is not meant as harsh as it sounds, but it's in response to Saresa with her post Raid Leaders Suck!

In this post she explains what a lot of raid leaders do wrong from her point of view as a raider. I will put against this my experience as a raid leader, and will try to show things from the other side.

I know this might come accross oddly at first, but bare with me.

Raiders are like a group of young puppies sometimes. They are jumping all around and tumble over eachother, very excited to go out and find a tree to pee against. Problem with this is that if you don't have a person (boss) to actually tell these puppies what a tree is, and what really is the sofa they will cause a lot of issues, and frankly....all they'll create is mess.

Raiders, like puppies, need structure. Structure and guidance. They need someone to steadily take the lead, stay calm when things go wrong, stay positive when wiping, and just generally a person who knows what he's doing.

Raiders also need to be given their own responsibility. You can teach them a trick, but it is far, far more efficient to teach them how to think about something themselves. That way they will learn their own tricks, and will be able to apply it to the next time something similar comes along.

There is a time for praise, there is a time for but slapping. Saresa complains that your raiders should always be praised, always reminded of what they were doing right. I agree.

That is to say, in principle I agree. It is far more powerful as a raid leader to lead from reward and praise than it is to lead from fear and discipline. However, discipline is needed in a raid group. Especially if this concerns a 25man raid group (remember the sofa peeing puppy?).

So while it is very very important to praise your raiders, it might be even more important to discpline them when needed. Not all the time, but decide on your own limits, and when they cross that line, stop them.

Be stern and clear, but fair. There is nothing wrong with calling your raiders out on behaviour that is considered unwanted, or actions that cause the group to be compromised. There is also nothing wrong on calling your raiders out on bad performance. In fact the only way for someone to improve is to know they're doing it wrong.

Provide structureSaresa is right on this one, mostly. A lot of raiders can think for themselves, but when you see that all the freedom you give them to think for themselves is mainly causing confusion, narrow it down.

A good example is healing assignments. I often leave it fairly open, and instead of assigning very detailed I often give out the assignment 'fill up where needed' to one or two healers. However, you can only ever do this with healers that you know will be able to see indeed the gaps where their heals should land. If you give this assignment to a healer who needs more structure, you will only cause chaos in their head and nothing good will come out of it.

This has a lot to do with knowing your raiders, and if you don't know them you should be able to guestimate it after one or two attempts. It's not science unfortunately, but if you lead enough raids you will get better at recognizing this.

Also, give your raiders the option to ask for structure. It is perfectly alright to ask your raiders if your explanation has been clear, if the assignments are clear, and if they have any questions left.

Understanding is the basis of doingDon't read out what an ability does, interpret it for your raiders.

For example:

Freezing Slash — Inflicts 25% Froststrike weapon damage (Frost or Physical, whichever will cause more damage to the target) damage to enemies within 6 yards in front of Anub'arak and freezes them in a block of ice for 3 sec. Instant

Would translate to:

Don't stand in front of him or you'll get frozen and will take damage.

The last part is particularly important. Your raiders need to know what the consequences are of standing in the wrong spot so they understand what their doing wrong, but also what they can adjust when it does accidentally go wrong. If a raider has no understanding of the fight he can never compensate for any accidents, and all flexibility is lost.

So yes, tell your raiders what to do, but mostly tell them why they're doing it.

Be the leaderPeople need someone to make decisions for them. Well, no, perhaps not on a person to person bases. But once you stick people together in a group they need someone to stick their head up and say "We will do it like this".

They will have to look up at this person and trust this person to make the right decision. If the raidleader calls it, they will have to trust the raidleader has good reasons to do so.

A small example.

We were in ToC last weekend with our Pugtastic raid, and I had called it. We had wiped on Anub several times, and I could notice the attention span dropping. Some people almost begged me for another try, but I had already gotten tells of people getting desperate.

So I called it. Told them that I had full confidence that we could do it, but that we simply needed a bit of time to digest the information that we had gathered by wiping on him that evening. I know I left some people disappointed. But I also knew that if I had continued I would not have left them disappointed, but annoyed.

Now I've left them with the feeling, no with the knowing, that we can do this, but that we just need a bit more time for it. And though they were disappointed that we didn't beat him this week, they know that we will beat him next week.

I know this too, you know why? Because people aren't annoyed with the boss, and from banging their heads against it, just more eager to kill that bastard.

If I had let the raid lead I would've banged our heads against it a bit longer, the people who were already starting to despair a bit would've not looked forward at all to going in the week after, and the people who did feel they had to go on would possibly have been so discouraged by it next week that they would already start with a negative positions. (positive thinking is half the deal).

I know this group can do it, but it is important that they know as well, and feel it.

So yes, while Saresa is right and you shouldn't get arrogant about it, you should be the leader, and you should be calling the shots.

Allow for folly, but never never at the expense of othersWhile this is generally a good advice for anywhere and any situation, it's even more true for a raidleader.

To me all my raiders are precious. Each of them has their own spot, and their own role to play, and I value all of them. And within my 10man we even know each other well enough to actually make a little fun of each other with a good heart and have the best of times.

I've known most of my 10man for 2 years or longer.

Unfortunately most raids don't know eachother this long already. And as the raidleader you should never show bias to anybody, not even jokingly. Be very very careful about this, and better be darn sure if you do poke fun at someone that he/she knows it's meant as a pleasant tease.

You want your people to be positive, and my experience is that no matter how well something is meant, if it goes towards the personal directed at a specific person side, it often is not taken as funny as it was meant to, and the atmosphere will become less good. Even if you don't notice at first, under water it will fester.

And like Saresa is now waiting for her raid lead to chew her out, I'll sit back and watch for reactions from my raiders.

And yes, you guys are MY raiders. My 10man leads itself practically, and while a lot of people think raid leading is stressful, with this group it's relaxation and fun. And pugtastic, pugs...well, hardly pugs anymore by now, they're so amazingly cool, that I'm very honored to be leading them.

Sunday, September 6, 2009

We managed to get faction champions down on 25 this weekend, and downed Twin Val'kyr after as well. Tonight we still have Anub to go. We also cleared ToC with our 10man and worked up to Freya, and we will be extending the instance lock for the first time this week so we can get extra time in on Mims hard next week.

I got my first trophy of triumph as well. Which got me and Thror discussing about these things.

In a full clear 10man ToC on normal and heroic you have a chance to win max 5 tropies. This is if you actually clear the place with 50 attempts left in the pocket (attempts left divided by 10 gives number of tropies in tribute chest), since all of these tropies come from the tribute chest.

In a full clear 25man ToC on normal and heroic you have a chance to win max 5 tropies on normal, then 5 tier tokens on heroic. And this is without anything in the tribute.

Theoretically once you can clear the whole hard mode without losing attempts this makes that 25s get about 3 times as many as 10, which is ok, since the 25s have more people.

However, until you can do this, and you're in a 10man pure guild, and you cannot do a perfect hard mode (which I assume to be pretty impossible for most guilds in the beginning), you will get 1 or 2 tropies on 10, and still 10 tropies on 25.

Sticking this back in numbers:10 players, 1 tropy = 10 % of your raid with a tier piece per week25 players, 5 trophies + 5 tier pieces + at least 1 from chest = over 40% of your raid with a tier piece per week

I can understand that Blizzard didn't want the 25s to gear themselves up through the 10s too easily, but please allow the 10s to gear up through the 10s at least. This disparity is a bit too much to my taste.

Besides that, not only do 10s get less loot, they also get worse loot. I keep wondering why since there are plenty of fights that are actually harder on 10 then they are on 25, simply because of the lack of extra bodies.

I mean fair enough, a 25man is harder to organize than a 10man. But if Blizzard wants to reward that, the extra loot should go to the raidleader. They are the ones organizing.

Until then it would be nice if Blizzard would stop seeing the 25s as more important and recognize the 10s for what they are. Good steady raid instances, that are just as hard to clear, only hard in different ways.

Friday, September 4, 2009

While I had wanted to talk about faction change, and I actually did switch my dranei shammie to a perky troll with pink braids, I am going to talk about something else first.

After this post on Aggro Junkie I was suddenly inspired to write about a different subject, so I figured I would just run with it, and go with faction change some other time.

My road to becoming a healer. I started World of Warcraft as a warlock. A cute gnomie I figured would be cool to play. So while Thror started his pallie, I ran around being a destro lock. We both got our horsies at 40 that way. (this was in Vanilla, so yay for warlock and pallie horsies back then).

I played my warlock till 60, and on the side I was levelling a hunter. The warlock was my main in the guild, and for the longest time my hunter was in a different, much smaller guild. I had made friends there which I wasn't ready to give up. The solution eventually came in introducing the people from my hunter's tiny guild to FP and they merged happily.

TBC came and I ran my warlock through the gates of the burning legion, and started running around in Hellfire. My hunter followed only slowly. Thror and I went through Hellfire together, but halfway through Zangarmarsh something happened, and I suddenly lost the feel for my warlock.

At that same time I had started levelling a shammie, I felt I had to do the whole dranei thing at least once, so why wouldn't I also play the new alliance class. She raced through content, it was amazing how fast I could level an enhancement shammie.

She reached 80 before my warlock did, and I announced an official main change. I would be the dual wielding axing shammie. It was great.

Until we started raiding.

Though I did pretty darn good on my shammie, my group needed healers more and more often, and I was asked more to heal on my shaman. I didn't like it.

Shaman healing was slow, and clunky compared to the fast paced enhance spec. Chain healing took forever, and chain heal was the only way to go back then. Besides that, I felt mostly like a walking trinket, since my totems seem to be the most important thing I brought to a raid. Of course it wasn't so, but everything I did on my shammie as a healer seem to take forever compared to what buttons I could press on my shammie as enhance.

So one day I sat down, and started thinking. I spoke to my then raidleader, and said that I wouldn't mind switching to become a healer, but not on the shaman. If I would have to heal, I would do it on my priest.

Problem... My priest was only 43 or so at that point. And we needed healers now.

I put my shoulders under it, and started levelling. Within a week not only did my priest level to 70, she was also ready to start healing Kara. (And yes, I did have a job and other things to go to. )

I was sold. I was addicted. I was a healer.

I couldn't have done all this without having several tanks very ready to run me through dungeons, help me level, and help me get gear. She was lucky enough to get a pretty okish healing set kitted out through the level 70 dungeons, and my tanks were patient enough to run me through.

The tank/healer relationshipThe moment you start levelling a healer you start developing a bond with your tanks. The tank's first responsibility is to keep the healers alive, and the healer's firs priority is to keep the tank alive.

I ask my tanks things about their role and class, so I can do a better job, so I can heal them better. And in return they keep an eye on not running out of los. And the first thing that a tank will do when additional mobs run in is make sure the healer is free from agro so they can do their job.

Communication is key, and not only the business like communication. As I've progressed in content, it became more and more important to know my tanks. To know how they would react to situations. To know how much health they had, and how much damage they would be able to mitigate, dodge, and block.

Over time I also got to know which abilities of theirs I can call on to save lives. Which abilties are their oh shit buttons, and how working together will make the experience so much more fun.

It did help that Thror went from healing to tanking in TBC and that I had a handy test subject available, but I could hardly expect there to be a paladin tank every time. So I started reading tanking blogs, and elitist jerks forums.

This is from my healer point of view, but I know that all good tanks have gone through the same from the other side. They need to know which abilities they can call on from a healer if they need it. They need to have complete trust in their healer(s) to keep them standing, and to allow them to do their job.

My tanksTo me personally dps is a way to let go of stress, rawr! But nowadays within a dungeon I can say that as long as one of the very good tanks I know comes along, we can basically bring any 3 people along to a heroic, and we'll make it. If need be the tank and myself will finish it together.

Of course dps is important. And the dps in my 10man (or in pugtastic nowadays for that matter) is very dear to me. Good dps makes the fight easier. The better the dps, the faster a fight goes, the less shit you have to deal with since there is less time for a mob to throw out shit.

In fact, the content that my 10man is currently working on couldn't be done without our outstanding dps. But the tank/healer relationship is special.

While I once thought about tanks as a meatshield way back when, something to make sure I could keep seeing the high numbers, as a healer my tanks are special to me.

My tanks are my big, cuddly protectors who keep me safe from harm. Who make sure that the raid lives, and who throw themselves in front of the raid to heroicly stand up against the big baddie.

They stand in front and shout out to the boss, "Hey dude, hit me, not my friends!"

I suggest that we create an international 'Wuv your tank' day, and give them a little extra love.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Apparently the faction change feature that people have spoken about so often is already available in the US. So if I would want to change in my nightelf for an undead lady I could. Does make me wonder how many people would actually want to use it, and how you go about chosing your counterpart on the other side.

I guess horde has never seen this many belfs before? I'll get back to it in a post later on the day, will have to spend some time thing about it.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

We did Twin Valkys last weekend in our 10, unfortunately faction champions proved an obstacle in our 25s, and so we skipped out of the rest of ToC and almost full cleared Ulduar with that group instead.

Tactics for the 25 are the same however, and from what I understood from the guild group who did get champions down on 25 they're as much of a pushover in 25s, as they are in 10s.

Divide into 2 groups, each with a tank and healer(s)

Group 1 stand at white portal, group 2 stand at black portal

Click. Group 1 will have white circles underneath their feat, group 2 black circles

Attack the Valkyr of the opposite color, next to the portal they are flying at

Grab orbs of your color circle, avoid orbs of the opposite color

When the vortex thing in the middle comes up, everybody should be the color of the vortex, so click on a portal to take that color (if you're already the right color you don't have to do anything)

When a valkyr shields herself everybody (except tank and healer(s) of the other valkyr) needs to switch to the color of that valkyr and attack to get the shield down

Rinse and repeat

Special tip: pick up manymany orbs, it's a lot of fun and you get to zoom around like a mad man. At 100 you get a special buff.

My personal experience is that it generally doesn't make too much of a difference, but sometimes you have those idiots...

It goes something like this:

"R u a grl irl?"

I don't know why, but the people who feel the need to ask these silly questions hardly ever seem to be able to type full words.

"Yup"

"Srsly?"

"Yup"

"Oh..."

By that time they run out of stuff to say or they start telling me how sexy I am.

"Ur so hot!"

"Really? you go for pixelated then?"

This is when you can almost hear them think what on earth that difficult word is.

"Huh?"

"Yah, go learn some English before you try to chat up intelligent females"

If it does get to this point, generally they are getting annoyed with me or they wander off. I've had from ignores to "Biotch" things happen.

Oh, and then there is the vent stories...

My native language isn't English, though I speak it fluently, so yes, I speak English with an accent. So sometimes there are men (rarely women) who feel they should comment on how sexy my accent is on vent. I pug, quite a bit, and in my guild I've never had this problem, but on the pug vents I still run into this sometimes.

And yaknow, if it would be once just to figure out where I come from, "Cool accent, where are you from?" type of deal, I would be totally cool with it. But there are a couple who keep drewling over it. I'm woman enough to ignore them. I am there to raid lead, but when it does get out of hand I do call them back and ask them to keep it in.

I also once had a guy who went completely off his rocker with the /lick command. I suddenly knew where to find the /slap command as well. Which is a thing I would actually do IRL as well. There are just things that I cannot accept.

Lets face it, most women know that they can expect some oddness from the male species out there once it's known that they have boobies. But generally it's not too bad, or if it does really bother you, all you have to do is say nothing ;)

Monday, August 31, 2009

This weekend I raided with the 25 on my druid, well at least a big part of it. I had a lot of fun, and not only that, it also made me realize that I do like my priest. I just shouldn't get overdoses of priestly raiding.

In our pugtastic raid we one-shot mimiron, and took a look at Vezax. Boy is there a lot of trash to kill. We also gave faction champions another try, and I still hate that fight. Still other raids are managing to beat it fairly easily, so should we. We just need to figure out how.

In our 10s we did manage to kill faction champion, and Twins. And boy are they easy. (Expect a write up soon.) We also got Orbit-uary and Sarth3D down. So yay, 1 closer to our drakes again.

We worked on mimiron firefighter as well, and got it to phase 4! Next week we should get him down, and then it's 1 left to go, Yogg+1 woot!.

So yeah, that was sort of my weekend. Lots and lots of raiding, lots and lots of sleeping and napping. And though the vuelta finished in our little town this weekend, all I saw of it were many helicopters flying over.

I rawred a lot on my kitty druid and let my wild side out. I just have to make sure not to burn myself out on her and change healing off with a healthy dose of whackbangboom!

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Ever had one of those days where you're hopping from one character to the other? Just because you don't feel like anything, but you feel you should do something?

Yes, it's one of those days.

I just forced myself through Occulus to get my triumph emblems, and yaknowwhat I don't even know for what. Blizzard made it completely impossible for me to switch out to the next tier until I have 4 pieces.

At least a guildie was kind enough to heal so I could go shadow, since I'm even more tired of hearing 'that spells not ready' or 'you can't do that yet' when I'm discipline.

Isn't it sad that I feel guilty when I start doing stuff on an alt though? I mean there's so much left to do on my priest, but I'm just confused with it. I feel like I should get emblems of triumph, but I don't know what to do with them.

I'm not seeing upgrades, but for all I know next patch my stats are hussled about again and I need a mountain of emblems (though I sincerely hope that Blizzard is done shuffling my talents about until the next expansion at least).

Maybe I should just go out and try alting again, this time the favourite of this month...anybody know which class is currently being 'balanced' upwards?

(yes, I held back, I had sentences that would drive my blog to the realm of 18+ in first >_

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

From the bowels of Deepholm, the elemental plane of earth, rose a rumble and the earth shook lightly. Deathwing shook his head and stretched as much as he could. He yawned a little and lazily scratched his chin.

For the first couple of years it had been hard, he had been so weakened. But now, now he felt stronger every day. And the plans that had been formed and molded in his mind would soon become reality...

This could be happening right now. Blizzard has already revealed to us that sometime in the nearby future Deathwing will return and will lay Azeroth to waste. With this horrific deed he will reshape the world as we know it, and while some areas may recover and come out anew, other areas will never be the same.

Lets face it, after Cataclysm, the World of Warcraft as we know it now, is gone. With that a lot of the current quests, factions, and achievements will likely no longer exist. Here's an overview of things that might change forever.

Keep in mind that these are my own speculations, and that they are based purely on information published and on common sense.

This is currently a pretty darn big achievement. It gets you a nice title as well. You see the title every now and then, but it still isn't something that most people have done.

With a lot of quests disappearing forever in Azeroth my guess is that this will become a feat of strength and that the title will become rarer and rarer.

Wintersaber Faction. There is one guy that hands out quests for this faction. If he happens to step the wrong direction when Deathwing comes by, he's dead and wintersaber faction with him. It's very possible that wintersaber mounts might become an even bigger rarity than they already are.

(Wintersaber will now be melted saber?)

Insane and Goblin Factions. I know not all the goblin races will become horde, but it's well possible that Booty Bay may become Booty Hole, and that goblin factions as they currently are will become rather impossible to get for Alliance.

With this it would also become quite impossible to get the Insane title. Though I've never seen this around, like, ever. It will become quite the title to have once it's no longer even possible to get it.

Dungeons and RaidsThe Onyxia quest line as it once was has already disappeared, with Ony going out to get level 80s now, the achievement might be completely gone. And Ony is likely not the only one.

It has already been announced that Ragnaros is back (and pissed), but that would mean that Molten Core is no longer the same. Go see this sort of stuff while you can.

Cooking Recipes. So while I can actually see it happen that the caravan in Desolace might still be tracking around there after the revamp. I can definitely advice to get your cooking recipes now, it's a fun little thing to do and well...it might not be there afterwards, or at least not in this form.

Base JumpingGo jump of some mountains, once a big dragon has swept by they might be a tad shorter.

In Feralas there is a nightelf lady at the twin collossals that sends you to the top, and once there you can buy a parachute and jump down. I've once read a post somewhere on basejumping in Azeroth. Here's a video that shows you some really cool places to jump from.

NostalgiaI might be a little silly about stuff like this, and though I can see how Cataclysm will be a lot of fun, I just have to go and see stuff as it is now. I feel like I should take screenshots of every single great view I see, even though I know I'm being silly, since there are more screenshots out on the internet than my computer would ever have space for.

I can't help it though. This is the WoW I've lived in for years now, and knowing that it will change so radically makes me feel slightly sad.

Lots of news out on the new expansion, and before blogging about all of it I wanted to let it sink in with me first. There's going to be many new things, but for the first time we're not only gaining, but also losing a lot of content.

I've already starting working on getting my old content done, I still have much to do, and all of a sudden it feels like I have little time to do it in.

I've gotten my guardian of Cenarius title. The title might stay, but I got it by working on Loremaster. Which, I think, is definitely a title that will go away. It will become a rarity to see someone with the title eventually, and I plan to be one of those people who does have it.

262 quests left to go in Kalimdor...

I'll try to get a full overview in from achievements that I feel might not make it through cataclysm or that will at least be altered a lot. Stay tuned.